New Spaces, New Actors: Religious Authority in the Age of Digitalization

This research explores how the emergence of digital spaces has challenged the traditional religious authority and enabled marginalized Islamic actors/ groups to find alternative ways to express themselves in Turkey. Through tracking hashtags, posts and virtual/ textual contents on various digital spaces such as YouTube, TikTok, Twitter (X), Instagram, Facebook as well as websites, chat forums and blogs of particular groups and preachers, it aims to provide an account of that how meaning-making, self-imagining and subcultural narration work. Also, this research combines digital ethnography with offline interviews and interactions with producers and users/consumers of these contents. 

First supervisor: Prof. Dr. Birgit Krawietz

Second supervisor: Dr. Martijn de Koning